Camera Kit

Build it yourself – Step by step, page by page, the storybook shows you how. Plug the parts, connect the circuits to a single board computer brain. Add a flash, trigger, battery. Choose a lens – wide-angle, fisheye, or macro.

Add the Tripwire Sensor – A set of simple sensors, each kit has one, and you can mix and match. The Camera Kit has a Tripwire Sensor: an infrared beam, with full-room range. Trigger snaps, track your cat.

Code your camera – Start simple. Make it flash. Next, change the timer. Now take a picture every second. Or when it’s sunny out. Step-by-step tips guide you through. Build photo filters, timelapses, sound and data-triggered snaps. Zap each app to your camera, and take them with you.

Try coding a camera →

Never-ending projects – Make, learn and level up with friends. Thousands of projects made by a global community. Spot an app you like? The Kano system automagically converts it into steps to follow. See the code, make it your own.

What’s in the box?

Pixel Kit

Anyone can make and code vivid pixels. Bring sound, data, stocks, scores, weather, games, art, animations and more to life – in 1.7 million colors. Put it anywhere.

Make light – Build the beautiful board yourself, like Lego. Clip together the buttons, joystick, and custom case, then add a battery. Learn about diodes, wavelengths, frame-rates, and color.

Control your pixels – Learn its logic, make it sparkle. Simple stories, like onscreen books, step you through. Draw pixel art with your mouse or finger; add frames, to make a cartoon. Code lights live, side by side, over the air, from anywhere.

Try coding pixels →

128 lights, infinite possibilities – Little tweaks lead to lovely effects, all your own. Make and learn with a cool community, of all ages. Your shares become tutorials for others to follow.

Speaker Kit

Build a smart Bluetooth speaker and synthesizer. Stream music, loop beats, disguise your voice, make walkie talkies. Learn and code electronic music on an instrument you make yourself.

Step by step story – With a simple book, build your own speaker, learn how it works. Connect the board, add the speaker cone – feel the magnet. Clip a boom tube, knobs and dials – to bring the bass.

Stream internet radio from any device over Bluetooth. Or plug it in with the 3.5mm jack.

Code a drumpad – pick the regions, program the sounds, tap out a beat

Add the Gesture Sensor – Sense proximity, direction, and distance. Harness the power of your hand to change the volume, switch tracks, distort recordings, or create your own sounds.

Music and code, connected – Hear true and false, if and while, iteration in action. Step by step online challenges demystify loop pedals, alarm clocks, theremins, doorbells – make them your way. Create a Tweet drumpad or tune into the International Space Station; zap that code to your speaker, and take it with you.

Try coding sound →

Practical projects by real people – Make beautiful music together. Tons of creations by the Kano World community. Simple challenges scale up in difficulty.

What’s in the box?

Mix and match

It all works together. Combine kits, swap sensors, mix and match however your like, to create useful tools and fun projects. Kano Code is the glue.

How does it work?

Our kits are united by simple, step-by-step Kano coding. There are fun challenges made for beginners to learn real coding skills, and for advanced makers to fluidly control real hardware. It runs in any browser, and Kano kits spin up their own WiFi network to connect to it.

Kano Code is based on our decades combined experience breaking down complex tech around the world. We use simple steps, plainspeaking, playful progression through game mechanics, and practical projects.

3. Get rewarded – With deep game design, level up, unlock new blocks, syntax, badges and more challenges. It brings out your competitive streak.

4. Be inspired – Kano World is a cool community full of amazing creations, digital and physical, made by people of all ages and skill levels. Kano Code breaks these down into step-by-step tutorials for you to follow.

5. Take apps with you – Zap up to three apps at a time to any of your kits. We’ve found that a real, powerful object, under your command, is the sweetest reward for hours spent logic wrangling.

What do people think?

Our favorite pledges

We’d love to send you these rewards for backing us. More on the right – plus classroom and non-profit pledges, in partnership with great charities and the Kano Academy.

Who’s it for?

Kano is for the curious – for anyone who wants to create technology, not just consume it. Beginners and pros.

We’ve spent many frequent flier miles watching people world-over take their first steps into creative computing. We’ve seen that, with physical-digital stories, simple steps, and powerful projects, computational confidence emerges. You fall into flow, and real skills follow.

Kano is for all ages. Our youngest computer maker has been 4, and our oldest, 81. As long as you can read, you can start.

Comfortable with code? You’ll be happy to know that Kano Code is designed to scale to advanced makers, with open-source technologies, and the latest Polymer framework. Indeed,we could use your help with a few things…

All ages, all over the world

Since we first bundled and box of bits and a book, and took it overseas, we’ve seen a new creative generation rising. Algorithms control our day-to-day – they don’t have to be invisible, made by just a few.

It began with a little cousin, Micah, who asked for “a computer I can make myself.” He had two conditions: “no one teaches me – it has to be as simple and fun as Lego”. It resonated wherever we went.

Complements the Computer Kit

Our new Computer Kit is now ten times faster than the version first launched here three years ago. It’s a powerful PC, with a playful OS, with hundreds of fun projects. Hack Minecraft, code art and music, learn the command line through narrative adventure, launch thousands of open-source apps, browse the web (with parental filters), and feel a sense of ownership.

The Computer Kit works perfectly with the new Camera, Speaker and Pixel Kits. Become a Kano Master and get all four.

Who are you?

We’ve been building a new kind of computer company in the pretty-East London for four years. We reside in the hollowed-out first floor of an old department store (as well as a small office in Shenzhen). We’ve successfully shipped over 30 productions of three different creative, code-powered kits to 86 countries.

Our 20-nationality collective believes in big things, but small details. For three years, we’ve looked and listened, with hundreds of thousands of kids, artists, educators, preachers, teachers around the world.

Why come back to Kickstarter?

The spirit of this community is the spirit of the new kind of computing that’s needed.

Multidisciplinary

Middleman-suspicious

Pluralist

Populist

Fairly priced

We’re back, because you backed us three years ago. You wrote your names in our software, made servers, solar stations, robots, and millions of lines of code, all over the world. We want you to be the first to join us (with discounts, natch). We want to thank you, praise you (like we should), and enlist you, to prove that a new kind of computing is needed for a new generation.

Why Kano?

Computers changed everything. They unlocked powers. Then, they got locked up. They were once physical. Now they’re hidden, by shiny sheets of glass, one-size-fits-all.

The first PC revolution was about making it simple for anyone on Earth to use computers. That’s why the next PC revolution must make it simple for anyone on Earth to understand & make computing, not just use it.

Risks and challenges

We’re a team with a lot of experience in making things and delivering them – digital products, consumer products and technology execution, with background at places like Skype, Keter, Newsweek, Sony, Memrise, and Red Hat. There are always challenges, but our promise is that we’ll rise to meet them with all our might. We’ll do everything in our power to leave our backers well looked after, and their rewards on-time or early.

We’ve given above a conservative estimate of of delivery dates. We are committed to keeping you informed of our progress in the months following the campaign. Our promise to deliver will be challenged at all times by the known complexities of manufacturing, production scheduling, shipping “atoms” between continents, and more.

Therefore, in the event that unexpected issues arise in the delivery schedule, we will do our utmost to minimize the impact on our supporters and dedicate ourselves to providing the best, most honest, experience. Our first 200 got hands-on help, and so will you if you join us.